There are plenty of B2B content strategy frameworks out there. Just having a framework to guide your content is already a step in the right direction.
The problem isn’t the frameworks themselves. The problem is where most teams start.
They start at the bottom of the funnel.
They map content to stages, gate everything that matters, and optimise for leads they can count. Then they wonder why the pipeline goes dry after two good quarters.
We’ve seen it enough times to have a house view on this. Most B2B content strategies are built to capture the 5% of buyers who are already in-market—and ignore the 95% who aren’t buying today but will eventually.
If you’re a CMO or marketing leader trying to build a content engine that actually compounds over time, that ratio matters more than any framework.
Haven’t heard of the 95/5 thing? It comes from a paper by Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, commissioned by LinkedIn’s B2B Institute and published in 2021. The paper is called “Advertising Effectiveness and the 95:5 Rule.”
The core finding: corporations change service providers like their principal bank or law firm roughly once every five years on average. That means only about 20% of business buyers are “in the market” over the course of a full year — and roughly 5% in any given quarter. The other 95% aren’t buying right now.
The exact ratio isn’t fixed across every category. B2B marketing leaders change agencies every three years on average, so it might be closer to 90/10. The precise number matters less than the principle: the vast majority of your TAM isn’t in a buying cycle at any given moment, so content weighted entirely towards conversion is ignoring most of your future pipeline.
The Frameworks Aren’t the Problem. The Starting Point Is.
Let’s be fair to the frameworks. Funnel-based models (TOFU–MOFU–BOFU and its variants) are useful for pipeline accountability and aligning with sales. Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) produces sharper messaging when you have the research capability to do it properly. Topic clusters scale traffic predictably. Content-as-product builds owned audiences over time.
But they share a common limitation: they all assume existing demand. They organise content around buyers who are already looking, comparing or moving through a journey. That works for the 5% who are in-market this quarter. It ignores the 95% who aren’t.
There’s a different starting point that begins from the opposite premise: demand creation.
Most of your clients aren’t in a buying cycle right now, so content should build familiarity, trust, and recall before intent shows up. Execution is ungated, high-value, and distributed where buyers actually spend time. Measurement shifts from leads to reach, engagement, and pipeline influence.
Here’s our house view: demand creation should be your primary content strategy. Your content strategy should be weighted towards that 95%. You still need conversion content for the 5% who are in-market, but you shouldn’t allocate 80% of your resources to bottom-of-funnel assets and gated lead magnets.
Flip that ratio, and things start to change.
One caveat: none of this matters if your sales team doesn’t have what it needs to close deals today. When we start a new engagement, that’s always the first thing we check. Sales enablement content comes first.
What This Actually Looks Like in Practice
The best B2B content programmes we’ve seen — and the ones we build — use demand creation as the foundation and layer other frameworks on top as needed. It’s not a single-framework religion. It’s a hierarchy.
Demand creation at the top. This is your primary content investment. Thought leadership, original research, industry commentary, founder-led content, and anything that earns attention without asking for anything in return. The goal is mental availability: when your buyer’s buying committee starts looking at solutions in 18 months, your brand is already in the conversation. This content is ungated, distributed on social and through email, and designed to be genuinely useful.
Funnel mapping underneath. When existing demand shows up — the 5% — you need content that helps convert it. Case studies, comparison guides, ROI calculators, product-led content. This is where TOFU–MOFU–BOFU is legitimately useful: as an organising layer for conversion content, not your entire strategy.
JTBD as an overlay. The sharpest messaging comes from understanding the jobs your buyers are trying to do. Use it to inform both your demand-creation content and your conversion content. It’s a lens that makes everything else better, not a separate programme.
SEO as a compounding engine. Topic clusters and pillar pages capture steady inbound traffic over time. Integrate them with your demand creation themes so that your SEO content reinforces the same narrative and point of view, rather than chasing volume keywords that dilute your positioning.
The Hard Conversation You’ll Need to Have
If you’re a CMO reading this and nodding along, you’ve probably already anticipated the problem. Demand creation is harder to attribute. Your CEO wants dashboards. Your CFO wants ROI on the marketing line item. And the content that primes the 95% doesn’t fit neatly into a last-click attribution model.
We’re not going to pretend that’s not a real challenge. It is.
But the alternative — building your entire content strategy around what’s easy to measure — is how you end up with a marketing function optimised for reporting, not results. Performance marketing can only capture demand from the 5% who are already in-market. It’s efficient, it’s measurable, and it has a ceiling. The moment you’ve harvested the existing demand, growth plateaus.
The better approach is to measure what you can — reach, engagement, share of voice, pipeline influence, self-reported attribution — and accept that some of your best content marketing may never show up in a dashboard.
The tools are out there for multi-touch attribution; it’s just harder than we would like.
How We Operationalise This: The 3×5 Framework
We’re fans of the 3×5 Content Marketing Framework, developed by author and content marketing consultant Lee Densmer. It’s the backbone of how we build content strategies for clients, and it solves the problem that most of the frameworks above leave open: how do you go from a strategic principle to a system your team can actually execute?
The premise is deliberately constrained. You choose three things in five areas: three business goals, three buyers, three content themes, three channels, and three metrics per goal. That’s it. The constraint is the strategy.
Most content programmes fail because they try to do too much — too many buyers, too many topics, too many channels, too many metrics. The 3×5 forces prioritisation. It eliminates the sprawl that turns a good strategic intent into a scattered editorial calendar.
Here’s how it connects to the demand creation argument we’ve been making:
Three business goals force you to decide what content is actually for. If one of those goals is building mental availability with the 95% — and we’d argue it should be — then your content mix has to reflect that, not just your intent.
Three buyers come from closed-won data and sales conversations, not assumptions. This is where the JTBD overlay earns its place — you’re choosing three buyers based on who actually purchases and understanding the jobs they’re trying to do when they engage with your content.
Three content themes are derived from buyer pain points, not brainstorms or keyword tools. Each theme has to connect to a buyer problem and a business goal. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t make the cut. This is what stops demand creation content from drifting into generic thought leadership that sounds impressive but doesn’t serve anyone in particular.
Three channels keep distribution focused. For most B2B, the sensible default is a blog for pillar content, a newsletter (email + LinkedIn) for original insight, and LinkedIn posts for reach and repurposing. But the choice should reflect where your three buyers actually spend time, not where you wish they did.
Three metrics per goal keep measurement honest. You’re tracking 3–9 things total, not 40 dashboard widgets. For demand creation goals, those metrics might be reach, engagement, and branded search volume. For conversion goals, they might be demo requests, pipeline influenced, and sales cycle length. The point is clarity, not comprehensiveness.
The framework operates on 90-day cycles. Every quarter, the team revisits the 3×5 and asks: is anything broken? Does a theme need retiring? Has a channel stopped performing? It’s a living system, not a strategy deck that gathers dust.
What We’d Recommend You Do Next
If you’re evaluating or rebuilding your content strategy, here’s a practical starting point.
Audit your current content mix. What percentage is genuinely aimed at building mental availability with the 95%, versus capturing demand from the 5%? Look at it objectively (Google Analytics) and subjectively (is it for brand or lead gen?).
Rebalance deliberately. You don’t need to abandon your conversion content. You need to invest more in content that earns attention from buyers who aren’t buying yet. Thought leadership. Original research. Practical, ungated content that makes your brand worth paying attention to.
Simplify to focus. Three goals, three buyers, three themes, three channels, three metrics per goal. If you can’t fit it in the 3×5, you’re probably trying to do too much. The discipline of choosing is what makes a content strategy executable.
Fix your measurement expectations. Have a conversation with your leadership team about what content marketing can and can’t attribute cleanly. Self-reported attribution, pipeline influence, and share of voice are imperfect but essential. Don’t let the gaps dictate strategy.
Show up consistently. Cadence matters more than any single campaign. Be present on the channels where your buyers spend time. Be useful. Be consistent. The 95% are watching even when they’re not clicking.
Content strategy in B2B is not a framework selection exercise. It’s a question of where you put your weight and how tightly you focus it. Optimising for the small slice of buyers who are ready to convert today, while leaving the vast majority unaware that you even exist, is probably not the best strategy.
Start with the 95%. Simplify with the 3×5. Build from there.
This is the operating system we use with clients. If you’re rebuilding your content engine and want to see how it works in practice, we’re happy to walk you through it.
